"Banana Bread" news and stories

Bananas the other side of ripe often end up in a tidy loaf spiked with walnuts. Instead of the same old, same old, take a tip from Victoria, Australia, restaurant Apte, and add coconut to the standard recipe, then give the banana bread a Middle Eastern touch with a topping of honey labneh, pistachios and seasonal fruit. (A half-cup of shredded coconut should be plenty for a standard banana bread recipe.)

Toasting the walnuts also adds depth of flavor to banana bread, as in this recipe from Curtis Stone. Or try this chocolate-infused two-tone banana bread recipe.

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Happy National Banana Bread Day!

One of the more simple of edible comforts, banana bread is typically concocted with ease, with pantry ingredients available on hand. Whipped together for breakfast or as an afternoon snack, the best banana breads combine the creamy texture of the fruit, with a sweet, underlying banana flavor.

Thought to have been created by 18th century American cooks, today's banana bread may stick to tradition, but also strays away from it, using a variety of regional additions, from extra banana, to chocolate, nuts, ginger and more. If you're looking for a flavorful new bent, try Martha Stewart's banana bread pudding, or our salty-sweet peanut butter and milk chocolate chip banana bread -- or link to your favorite banana bread recipes in the comments.



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Great things often come in bunches, and bananas are no exception.

I have a foodie confession: While I do like fruit, I almost never eat it in its full form. I try -- really I do. I buy fruit and eat some nibbles, but before I get to the rest, it inevitably goes bad and I have to either have to throw it into a smoothie pronto, or freeze it for a smoothie later. But that's not the case with my beloved banana.

Banana is the wonderful fruit that's good even when it's bad. The blacker and more shriveled that the skin is, the better it is for baking up a batch of banana bread. I picked some up a few weeks ago, with the best of intentions, but they went black before I could eat them. But they're bananas! So, no matter how hot my apartment was, I knew what I had to do.

As if that wasn't good enough -- recipes that allow you to make the most of fruit going bad -- banana bread is one of the easiest and most forgiving foods to bake. The above was whipped up half-assed. I doubled my recipe. I didn't level off my measurements. I smushed and mixed it all together in the end with a potato masher. But still, the end result was a nice warm cakey bread with a little bit of melting butter.

Like so many other people, I nearly always have a couple of bananas laying around that are getting overly ripe. Sometimes I just stick them into the freezer for later use, but I often toss them into a loaf of banana bread. Banana bread is fast, easy and works great for both breakfasts and for snacking. The only drawback is that you can get tired of it after making the same loaf recipe several times in a row. It is easy to dress up a loaf by tossing in chocolate chips, nuts or raisins, but it's nice to have some more varied variations available, as well. In this month's Vegetarian Times magazine, I saw a recipe for Peanut Butter Banana Bread with Chocolate Chips that looked quick, easy and tasty. Not surprisingly, it lived up to my expectations. The bread is slightly heavy, but not too dense, and has a good balance of peanut butter and banana flavors. I used milk chocolate chips instead of semisweet and cut back on the amount slightly. The bread is good plain and toasted, for breakfast, with tea or for dessert!